Uncategorized —

Universities respond to decline in computer science students

In response to concerns that the decreasing number of computer science …

It's no secret that there are fewer undergraduate students majoring in computer science today than there were in the late '90s. The Computing Research Association's statistics show that the number of freshman who list computer science as a probable major has fallen by 70 percent since 2000. According to the Associated Press, universities are responding to this trend by attempting to spice up computer science education and make it more appealing to incoming students.

One example is Georgia Tech's new robotics program, which uses an inexpensive programmable robot called the Scribbler to encourage hands-on learning. The Scribbler, which can be programmed to draw shapes and navigate through obstacle courses, is relatively compact and costs only $75.

In addition to formulating curricula that are more colorful and engaging, universities are also offering new programs that focus on multimedia or web development, topics that are becoming increasingly relevant for many contemporary computer programmers. These are also the skills that students are most likely to have developed before heading off to college, and so it forms a natural bridge into the computing sciences.

I have less than fond memories of my own experiences with computer science education. I was frustrated with the emphasis on niche commercial development tools that I had never used before and have rarely used since. I also got frustrated with the emphasis on technical minutiae that aren't particularly relevant to general application development. Assembly programming and compiler design skills acquired in college aren't going to be very useful for software developers who enter the workforce and get paid to write web applications with ASP.NET or Ruby on Rails. That particular problem could largely be resolved by the emergence of new academic programs that differentiate between computer science and web application development. Few schools do this, however.

Improvements to computer science education are being touted as a way to prevent the United States from continuing to lose relevance in the technology industry, a problem that is also becoming pervasive across the board in other fields relating to math and science. Although increasing the number of computer science students could make the United States more competitive in the tech industry, there are other factors that should be included as well. Encouraging students to become technology entrepreneurs isn't going to do much good if abusive patent litigation, for instance, prevents them from innovating and developing products. Refactoring computer science education is a step in the right direction, but other reforms are needed as well.